Read a lot, watch some, swipe rarely

In his recent article On Ultra-Processed Content, Cal Newport offers a helpful analogy comparing processed foods and media content.

In this analogy, Newport equates passive-text media like books to minimally processed foods, twentieth-century mass media like radio and television to moderately-processed foods, and bite-sized content from social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok to hyper-processed foods. For the full details on Newport’s rationale for making these three comparisons, I highly recommend reading the full article.

In general, each degree of processing results in an increase in palatability and a decrease in nutritional value. It’s why many wouldn’t be blamed for sooner reaching for a Dorito than a salad. Similarly for content, higher degrees of processing makes them more immediately exciting to consume but fails to make us any wiser or thoughtful — think perfectly cut clips covering road rage incidents or the latest gossip on a Hollywood divorce.

Anecdotally this feels right. After reading, I tend to feel great. In contrast, there is something distinctly mind-numbing about the act of scrolling through a feed of bite-sized, algorithmically-curated material.

I love Doritos and Twinkies as much as the next person. If we eat them occasionally, we’ll probably feel fine. If we eat them all the time, we probably won’t feel great.

It is worth considering the impact of our information diet through the same lens. After all, in Newport’s words, “what is a TikTok dance mash up if not a digital Dorito?”

An easy-to-follow heuristic that’s growing on me is: “Read a lot, watch some, swipe rarely.” Obviously there are exceptions, you can surely find examples of junk text to read and examples of truly useful content on social media so there is an element of selectivity to all of this. But in striving for these principles most of the time, I suspect I’ll feel better.

We are not just what we eat. We are, more broadly, what we consume.